Poll of the Day > spaghetti sauce is just gravy

(+) Yeah! (+)

nt

What the FUCK is this shit

No

Spaghetti Sauce is more similar to a chili than a gravy.

that doesn't even kind of fit? they are both sauces is probably what you mean.

Listening to a britsh person call curry "gravy" still just makes my brain explode. It doesn't make sense and it never will.

it's gravy you pour over noodles

pedantry time: you're moving laterally across a conceptual hierarchy. cats are not dogs, they are both mammal pets. apples are not oranges, they are both round fruits. spaghetti sauce is not gravy, they are both sauces.

at best you could maybe combine them, since they are not mutually exclusive. "spaghetti sauce" surprisingly means "sauce intended to be put on spaghetti" and "gravy" means something like "thickened sauce with meat flavor/based on meat juice". those have no overlap besides 'sauce' but have no contradiction either, so "thickened sauce based on meat juice intended to be put on spaghetti" is a valid concept. but neither "spaghetti sauce" nor "gravy" captures that idea.

Gravy is made out of meat, while spaghetti sauce doesn't have to be.

a white gravy doesn't involve meat

it can, since that's how you make it into an excellent sausage gravy, but it doesn't exactly need to be.

exceptions don't define the concept, they are exceptions to the concept

hence, spaghetti sauce is also gravy

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Spaghetti Sauce is more similar to a chili than a gravy.

Chili over spaghetti is great.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/94c36f1f.jpg

(Damn it, now I want a Cincinnati five-way)

ConfusedTorchic posted...

hence, spaghetti sauce is also gravy

spaghetti sauce is not an exceptional case of gravy

Zareth posted...

Gravy is made out of meat

Specifically, it's made from byproducts of cooking something else. Usually, that means the juices and rendered fat from meat, but you can also make veggie gravy with juices that have come off of veggies. I'd also generally still count it as gravy if you make it by deglazing a pan to dissolve solid bits left behind. The key distinction I would make is that the gravy reuses byproducts from cooking things that are not ingredients in the gravy. If it doesn't reuse byproducts, or those byproducts are from cooking something that's part of the sauce, it's just a sauce.

In that regard, I would say that if you're making your pasta sauce by cooking meatballs in the same pot, then adding your tomatoes and any other veggies to that pot to incorporate the juices/fond from cooking the meatballs, you could call it a gravy. If you're making bolognese sauce and the meat is just getting mixed straight into the sauce, I would not call that gravy. I also wouldn't call a vegetarian sauce gravy because even if the veggies were sauteed first and the resultant flavoured oil/fond were incorporated into the sauce, the veggies are an ingredient in the sauce. If you made, say, eggplant parmagiana and you made your sauce using whatever was left in the pan after frying your eggplant, that could be called gravy, though that's stretching them point a bit because in my experience eggplant doesn't really leave much flavour behind in the pan.

Saying this, apparently some parts of Italy will just call basic tomato sauce a gravy regardless of the nuance of its preparation, so there's precedent for ignoring this distinction. It's also common in Italy to use pasta water in making any pasta sauce, though, and I'd say that qualifies it as gravy under my definition, so maybe it doesn't ignore it after all. I dunno. This just makes enough sense to me to be what I accept as the distinction.

you can make gravy with just flour, butter, and milk

That's a bechamel sauce. I wouldn't call that a gravy unless you used rendered meat fat (or oil from cooking veggies, particularly onions/garlic) to make it instead of butter.

or, as it's known better

a white gravy

adjl posted...

<snip>

I would say that in your examples you are merging the concepts, which is valid, but not the same as unifying the categories. if I say "gravy", generally that will not include spaghetti sauce, and vice-versa. if I make something that has properties of both, you can say it's technically both, but the categories themselves don't merge. you can't really define one of these in terms of the other ("a spaghetti sauce is a gravy that... or a gravy is a spaghetti sauce that..."). they are both sauces. and you could have a sauce that has both qualities. but one category does not come from the other, they are sibling categories descended from a more general concept.

(not finding many sources for meatless gravy. a gravy without meat is really just something emulating gravy. generally "real" gravy involves meat juices; no-meat gravies are exceptions.)

ConfusedTorchic posted...

hence, spaghetti sauce is also gravy

Just think, all that time wasted and you convinced absolutely no one.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

or, as it's known better

a white gravy

Not my fault people don't know what things are called. Take that route, and there's no reason to consider sauces and gravies separate concepts. I'll be sure to keep that in mind the next time I put strawberry gravy on my ice cream.

Sahuagin posted...

I would say that in your examples you are merging the concepts, which is valid, but not the same as unifying the categories. if I say "gravy", generally that will not include spaghetti sauce, and vice-versa. if I make something that has properties of both, you can say it's technically both, but the categories themselves don't merge. you can't really define one of these in terms of the other ("a spaghetti sauce is a gravy that... or a gravy is a spaghetti sauce that..."). they are both sauces. and you could have a sauce that has both qualities. but one category does not come from the other, they are sibling categories descended from a more general concept.

I would say that all gravies are sauces ("sauce" being any liquid added to a dish, distinct from broth being liquid that a dish is primarily cooked in) but not all sauces are gravies. Gravies are then specifically sauces made using byproducts from cooking something else that isn't part of the sauce.

Sahuagin posted...

(not finding many sources for meatless gravy. a gravy without meat is really just something emulating gravy. generally "real" gravy involves meat juices; no-meat gravies are exceptions.)

In general, yeah, vegetarian gravies tend to be a matter of cooking veggies down into a sauce more so than thickening veggie juices. Conceptually, though, I don't see any reason it couldn't extend to meatless options.

One notable exception to my definition, though, is onion gravy: That's made by caramelizing onions and cooking them down in broth that then gets thickened, so that's a case where you do have the primary flavour component mixed into the sauce, but it's still considered a gravy. I'm okay with calling that an exception to the rule, though.